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    Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love & Friendship
    Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love & Friendship
    Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love & Friendship
    Ebook323 pages3 hours

    Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love & Friendship

    By Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Friends. You gotta have 'em, but sometimes they drive you crazy. You love 'em, but sometimes they make you mad. They'll help you through a crisis...unless they are the crisis.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChicken Soup for the Soul
    Release dateSep 25, 2012
    ISBN9781453279304
    Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love & Friendship
    Author

    Jack Canfield

    Jack Canfield has sold more than 80 million books worldwide under the Chicken Soup for the Soul brand. He holds the Guinness Book World Record for having seven books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list.

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    • 4/5
      Another very well written chicken soup book. However I, personally, appreciate the regular books better. This book was to focused upon one subject, that it didnt pull you into the book as normal chicken soups do. It was very good, but it was to subject based.

    Book preview

    Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Love & Friendship - Jack Canfield

    CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE TEENAGE SOUL ON LOVE & FRIENDSHIP

    CHICKEN SOUP

    FOR THE

    TEENAGE SOUL

    ON LOVE &

    FRIENDSHIP

    Jack Canfield

    Mark Victor Hansen

    Kimberly Kirberger

    Backlist, LLC, a unit of

    Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC

    Cos Cob, CT

    www.chickensoup.com

    Contents

    Introduction

    1. FALLING IN LOVE

    The Boy at Band Camp Molly Gaebler

    Fugue Don Keys

    Just One Look, That’s All It Took Dan Mulhausen

    Friends for Life Tina Leeds

    Impossible Things Can Happen Pegah Vaghaye

    You Are All of This to Me Melissa Collette

    Lucky Ambrosia Gilchrist

    Two of Me Anne G. Fegely

    What I Really Learned in World Geography Cortney Martin

    I Finally Did It Katherine Rowe

    And There He Was Joanna Long

    My Secret in Silence Lorelei Pablo

    Reflections Paige Melillo

    The Sound of Silence Rebecca Woolf

    In Love Michelle LaNoce

    2. BREAKING UP

    Breathing Michelle Siil

    My Best Friend Jayme Johnson

    Teenage Love Molly Day

    Always Amy Catalano

    Living Without You Kristy Glassen

    Late-Night Talk Nicole Hamberger

    The First Hannah Brandys

    One of Those Days Cassie Kirby

    Sand Castles Jennifer Reichert

    When We Risk It All Kristy Glassen

    3. FRIENDSHIP

    Tinfoil and a Hair Ribbon Cheryl Costello-Forshey

    Saying Good-Bye Kathryn Litzenberger

    I Hope Laura O’Neill

    Losing My Best Friend Amanda Russell

    My Friend Andrea Laura Loken

    My Brilliant Friend Benedicta Goveia

    I Know Exactly What You Mean Melinda Favreau

    Drowning Rebecca Slobada

    Two Girls and a Friendship Pey Jung Yeong

    For Such a Time as This Sarah Klapak

    Sorrows Underneath Zihanna Rahman

    The Sisters I Never Had Amanda Cuda

    Love Letter to the Card Corner Gwynne Garfinkle

    Nerds Owen Rosen

    My Friend and I Are Different Zoe Graye

    Unsinkable Friendship Delicia Dudley

    Friendship Is Like a Flower Jenifer Sunday

    Choosing a Broken Heart Kara MacDonald

    One Step Behind Christy Vander Griendt

    Forever Beyond a Good-Bye Adam Cohen

    Why They Are Friends Kristy Glassen

    4. TOUGH TIMES

    Through the Eyes of a Teenager Marissa Roche

    Operation Save the World Jennifer Winkelman

    Like a Brother to Me Paula Leifer

    I Will Be Missing You Sara Profitt

    Tag Erin Gandia

    Eternal Light Anastasia

    One Final Lesson Noah Campana

    The Bus Stop Anna Maier

    5. FAMILY AND LOVE

    My Little Brother Christine Walsh

    My Sister, My Enemy, My Friend Allison Thorp

    Always There for Me Kelley Youmans

    The Bigger Man C. S. Dweck

    A Pyramid Jonathan Evans

    Of Fathers and Sons Scott Diel

    A Confession Sami Armin

    Journeys with Dad Caitlin Keryc

    In Mom We Trust Rebecca Woolf

    My Mother Staci Warren

    Broken Heart Ashleigh Dumas

    A Simple Gift Shelby Schanandore

    6. ACTS OF KINDNESS

    The Stranger Within Amy Hilborn

    One Single Rose Amanda Bertrand

    The Graduation Dance Linda Chiara

    Mary Jodi Rudin

    May I Help You? Bobbi Smith

    7. GROWING UP

    The Need for Speed James D. Barron

    On Shame and Shadowboxing Bret Anthony Johnston

    Spare Change Alyssa Morgan as told to C. S. Dweck

    The Rumor Was True Michael T. Powers

    Stupidity Marjee Berry-Wellman

    Waves of Good-Bye Jennifer Baxton

    When It All Changes Rebecca Woolf

    What’s on the Inside Eleanor Luken

    And Still I Search . . . Brian Firenzi

    The Single-for-Life Syndrome Rebecca Ayres

    Sweet-and-Sour Sixteen Ronica Stromberg

    First Kiss Ron Cheng

    Changes and the Game High School Adelene Wong

    A Toast Sarah Watroba

    Who Is Jack Canfield?

    Who Is Mark Victor Hansen?

    Who Is Kimberly Kirberger?

    Contributors

    Permissions

    Introduction

    Dear Teens,

    Since the first Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul book was released in 1997, we have been receiving hundreds of letters a day from teens like you—and possibly even you! We receive so many letters about love and friendship that we felt it was time to compile a book dedicated entirely to these two important subjects.

    Love and friendship are top priorities for nearly everyone, but especially for teenagers. Your friends are almost as important as your family, and the lessons you learn from friends, boyfriends and girlfriends are lessons that shape who you are and who you will become as an adult.

    The stories in this book are about relationships and the lessons we learn from them. It is our hope that you will see yourself in many of these stories, and that you will realize that you are not alone in the trials that come with any friendship or relationship. May you discover from these stories, and in your own life, how amazing friendships can be and how blessed we all are when love is a part of our lives.

    We hope you enjoy reading this book and that you find comfort and guidance within these pages.

    All our love, Kimberly, Jack and Mark

    1

    FALLING

    IN LOVE

    Love doesn’t make the world go around. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

    Franklin P. Jones

    The Boy at Band Camp

    Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.

    Louise Driscoll

    Strains of Mariah Carey floated in the background as we held each other close and swayed to the rhythm of the music. I hadn’t expected us to be so intimate when I asked the guy who had been my best friend at summer camp to dance. But as my head rested on his shoulder and his arms wrapped around my torso, I realized that I had fallen head-over-heels for this guy. My timing had never been worse. It was the farewell dance at summer camp, the night before we left, and I was just realizing that I wanted to be with him. Furthermore, I had gone to middle school with him for the past two years, and I had never thought twice about the fact that I saw him literally six times a day. Then, he was just the annoying little boy who threw goldfish at my friends and me during lunch. But now he was the boy who would save me a seat at breakfast and write messages on my hand. The one with the cute smile and jokes that would make me giddy with laughter. And now I was dancing with him, the wonder boy. I had never been more content in my entire life. The song’s last notes faded out and we just stood, locked in our embrace. Neither of us wanted to move; the moment was too perfect. However, we were soon interrupted by the loud drumbeat of a Blink-182 song. We jumped apart, startled.

    Whoa, he said, shyly smiling. That scared me. I smiled back at him and nodded in agreement. We were soon joined by a group of our friends and began jumping around to the muffled words of All the Small Things.

    It was now 9:30 P.M., time for us to crawl into our sleeping bags and whisper under the pillows. I was walking back to my cabin, grinning from ear to ear in the dark. Unexpectedly, someone jumped onto my back, causing me to stumble. I looked up to see who had attacked me and it turned out to be my friends Beth and Kari.

    So . . . Molly! Beth said to me, with a smirk on her face.

    Y . . . yes? I stammered, turning red.

    You and Brian, eh? teased Kari.

    All I could do was smile and laugh, but that was enough to send my friends into squealing fits of, Oh my GOD! and, I knew it! Satisfied that they had pulled the latest gossip out of me, they pranced off to tell the rest of my cabin. I didn’t really care. They were all my best friends, and they would have found out sooner or later.

    The next morning was concert day. We all had rehearsal in between packing our suitcases. I walked to the piano room for my ten o’clock run-through. I rushed through my piece and didn’t bother to stick around for my feedback. Instead, I left the amphitheater where the orchestra was rehearsing and joined a group of my friends who were exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

    Molly! You’re here! said one of them.

    Yeah, I tried to get out of rehearsal as soon as possible, I replied as I grabbed a handful of pretzels from a bowl on the bench.

    We started talking about nothing in particular, laughing and joking about anything and everything. Suddenly, Elise shouted Hey Molly! Look who it is! and pointed to my right. Snapping my head around, I saw Brian strolling up the hill to the amphitheater. I blushed and waved and quickly turned back to the conversation. He joined us and I could feel the rickety bench we were sitting on sink lower with his weight. Everyone’s eyes were on me. I fidgeted with my bracelets while the silence grew.

    What’s going on? he asked, with a sincerely confused look on his face. Out of fear that one of my friends would embarrass me in front of him, I jumped up, mumbled something about forgetting to pack my sweatshirt and ran off in the direction of my cabin. Even though nothing extremely unordinary had happened, I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. I walked down to the beach instead of to my cabin and sat down on the sand. I felt like being alone for a while.

    I wiped my tears on my sleeve while hugging all my friends. I couldn’t believe it was time to go home already! Our time together had gone by so fast. I would have to wait a whole year before I would see these people again, I reminded myself as I heaved my overflowing duffel bag into the trunk of the car. All around me, cameras flashed, pens were scribbling digits, and people sobbed into each other’s shoulders. Saying good-bye is always hard. But I was ready to go. I had seen everyone I needed to, until I heard my name being yelled from across the way.

    Molly!

    I turned around to see who had called my name. My heart skipped a beat. It was exactly who I hoped it would be.

    Are you about to leave? Brian asked.

    I nodded. I was afraid to speak; afraid of what would come out of my mouth.

    So, I’ll see you at school then . . . he said.

    Yeah, definitely! I said, a little too enthusiastically.

    High school is a big place. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for you, though, I added.

    Okay, me too, he said, with a slight smile.

    I stepped in to give him a hug, one (I thought) he eagerly accepted. For a few seconds I felt the peaceful bliss that had made me so content the night before. The head on the shoulder, the hands on my back . . . it was completely comfortable. But it ended in hardly enough time for me to even begin to enjoy it.

    So I’ll see you later, then, he said, and turned to leave.

    Yeah, later, I whispered. Umm, Brian? He stopped and turned his attention back to me. If you want to . . . you know . . . umm, like . . . get together . . . or something . . . before school starts . . . just give me a call . . . I’ll be around . . . I stammered, my nerves trembling with anticipation.

    He just looked at me standing in front of him, bright red and chewing my lips to death. Then he smiled, put his hand on my shoulder and said, I’ll keep that in mind.

    After that, he turned and walked toward the parking lot. I watched his back get smaller and smaller until he disappeared behind a clump of trees. It was only then that I realized I was holding my breath.

    Molly Gaebler

    Fugue

    Avery small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.

    Stendhal

    Let’s call her Monique. Her real name always seemed too common for her, too plain. She moved to south Texas during our senior year of high school. She had transferred from somewhere up north, maybe New York.

    Just as she was too grand for her small name, she was too lovely, too classy for our high school. She liked yoga and Mozart, wrote poetry and preferred old movies to sitcoms. She couldn’t pass a bookstore or antique shop without browsing for an hour. But her parents had money, gobs of it, so the clique of similarly wealthy, popular students sucked her in, claiming her as one of its own before she could do anything about it. These were cheerleaders and athletes, blond-haired and well-dressed, who drove convertibles and finagled beer kegs for the parties they threw when their parents went on ocean cruises.

    I was never invited to the parties. Whereas Monique preferred books over beers, I preferred skateboarding to school spirit. My hair was long, and my clothes were baggy. While the popular kids didn’t hate me—at times it seemed to be strangely cool to be seen talking to a skater or surfer—they certainly didn’t embrace me. My parents could barely afford to pay our bills, let alone go on a cruise. I spent my nights tearing around parking lots on my board. Occasionally, I’d see a car full of athletes and cheerleaders buying provisions for their parties. All of them looked so beautiful, wearing pressed shirts and perfume I could smell from across the parking lot. Sometimes they’d wave to me, as if a dangerous river raged between us, one that would drown them if they came any closer.

    Monique sat beside me in English class, and in the course of the school year we became friends. That is, that’s what she said we were—friends—when I or anyone asked. And as we spent more and more time together, more and more people asked. We went to lunch together—she drove us for sushi or Indian food (I’d never had such meals before) in her white convertible VW Beetle. We studied for tests at the library, and spent days and even a couple of evenings at the beach. My nights skating in abandoned parking lots dwindled. Once we snuck into a club and listened to a live jazz band. I’ve always remembered it was called Fugue. Monique told me their name came from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, and that fugue basically meant different instruments or voices coming together, overlapping and finally harmonizing. We saw movies, and I noticed that when she was scared she chewed her thumbnail. Sometimes she held my hand or kissed my cheek good night. Sometimes we held each other’s gaze for a second too long. I adored spending time with her, and when I stood near her, my nerves fluttered, and waves of joy and panic rolled in my stomach. Somewhere between English class and California rolls, I’d fallen in love with her.

    And so, apparently, had Paul Williams, a beefy linebacker. When they started dating, she told me about him as if I should be thrilled. Fool that I was, I pretended to be. Monique and I still went for sushi—Paul didn’t share our lunch period—and for a while she made an effort to study with me or go to movies, but our time together started to fade. When we talked, the word friends came up more than it had before, as if she were defining our boundaries, and I began to hate it. Less and less, she reached for my hand, and she stopped kissing my cheek good night. It felt as if those parts of my body had vanished or been amputated; if she no longer touched them, they no longer existed.

    So I returned to the darkened parking lots. I began to see Monique in the overloaded cars making their beer runs—though she never drank, or hadn’t when we spent time together—and always Paul Williams was attached to her. She started calling me less often, even when she’d promised to, and some nights I picked up the phone and listened for a dial tone, hoping the problem was beyond her control. The phone, though, functioned perfectly. The problem was Paul Williams. They walked arm in arm wherever they went and kissed each other before tardy bells at school.

    One day after English class, I blew up at her. I told her she deserved more than the big oaf, that he didn’t understand her and she should open her eyes. I said she was changing for the worst, becoming someone I no longer recognized, and if she wanted to be part of a group who cared more about partying than people, we couldn’t be friends anymore. (I’d rehearsed the speech numerous times in the mirror and in the parking lots.) Her face crumpled and turned red, tears hung on her eyelashes, and just as I was building to the part about how much I loved her, she spun and ran away. I don’t know where she went, but I’ve always imagined she ran straight into the arms of Paul Williams.

    We stopped speaking. I heard that she went to the prom with Paul and that she’d been accepted to Yale for the fall. As our graduation neared, I tried to say hello to her, to ask how she was doing and eventually to apologize, but she never responded. It was as if I were talking to myself in the mirror.

    So on the night her little white car pulled into the parking lot where I was skateboarding, I expected it to park near the store and for Paul Williams to jump out and run inside. But the VW steered away from the store and pulled up to where I was trying to learn a new trick. Monique was alone, and when she approached me I expected her to scream and slap me, then to speed away into the night. That’s what I deserved.

    But for a while she didn’t say anything. She just stood beside her car with her arms crossed. She looked at her feet, occasionally biting her thumbnail.

    You were right, she said finally.

    I was? I didn’t know what I’d been right about. My stomach tightened.

    I’ve changed, she said.

    What do you mean?

    We can’t be friends anymore.

    I didn’t know what to say. I realized I’d always hoped she would prove me wrong on that point. I’d only said it so she would prove me wrong.

    And just as I was about to respond—I didn’t know what I was going to say; I hadn’t rehearsed anything— she started toward me. Here it comes, I thought, the slap. She walked slowly, still looking at the ground more than me, and without realizing it, she crossed the river that had always separated me and the popular kids, the river that had, for the last few months, separated me and Monique. I braced myself and closed my eyes.

    She kissed me. Her lips were soft and warm, but somehow they made me feel pleasantly cold. It took everything I had not to shiver. We kissed for a moment, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I would learn. Before she left for college and we lost track of each other forever, Monique would spend the summer teaching me about love and friendship, showing me the strange and sad and occasionally beautiful ways the two complement each other or cancel one another out.

    Don Keys

    Just One Look, That’s All It Took

    My cousin was getting married, and I was tapped to be a participant in the wedding—a groomsman to be exact. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. My cousin lived in California and I lived in Washington, but since my cousin and I were very close, my family and I knew we had to be there for the wedding.

    It was a gorgeous fall day in California, a perfect day for a wedding. The church was beautifully decorated and colors danced all over the room as the sun shone through the stained-glass windows. I looked as fashionable as ever in my black tux and emerald green vest. The bride was stunning. I never saw two people more happy just to be in each other’s presence than I did that day standing at the altar. You could see in their eyes that this was true love. They had each found their other half.

    I couldn’t help but think about my relationship at home. As much as I wanted to deny it, it was falling apart. She was my first serious girlfriend. I loved her a lot, but when you start to forget the reasons why you got together in the first place and when the negatives start

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